“He’dwondered,” Samson corrected bravely, but still very quietly and without raising his head.
“You could’ve come and got us,” Jo said defensively.
“A reprieve is sometimes necessary,” said the elf, who had barely moved from the television and still did not tear his eyes from it. “And there is not much to be done, for now.”
Samson caught her eye, but seemingly wasn’t able to speak until he’d ducked his chin again. “I made some breakfast for everyone.”
Slowly, Jo walked the rest of the way to the couch, leaning heavily against it. “Thanks, Sam. That’s very thoughtful of you,” she murmured, distracted by the images flickering across the TV screen.
They were showing footage of the Hakone region now, still smoldering in some places, burning in others, but mostly just completely destroyed. With a sickening lurch, Jo found herself subconsciously comparing the sight to old photos she remembered learning about in her high school’s ancient history class—the entirety of Pompeii sitting in ruins, whole families frozen forever in their last moments of life, completely unaware of it being taken from them. The images of the long-ago Roman city came alive vividly in her mind, like she’d seen it before. Jo attributed it to the footage she’d all but seen on loop now overlaying with her past school lesson.
She wasn’t sure what was worse, seeing something like this coming, or being blindsided. For example, Shizuoka had watched their neighboring region fall to the might of a natural disaster, knowing all the while they were next. Multiple clips of a tsunami, triggered by the quake, only added to the still spreading damage.
It was truly becoming too much to bear, a relentless assault of one thing after another after another.
She didn’t know how the men continued to do it, stare at the news with their somber tones, as if seeing something she couldn’t. So, Jo didn’t bear it. She turned away and stepped toward the kitchen, where Samson had laid out mismatched plates and platters filled with breakfast foods, willfully oblivious to the horror-movie cinematics only a few yards away.
Apparently, she wasn’t alone in needing to step away, because Jo nearly jumped out of her skin at the sudden appearance of the orange-haired man at her side.
“Thank you for making breakfast,” Jo said, mostly just to break the silence. Samson nodded, keeping his eyes set firmly on moving the platters so that they were in a perfect line. Jo grabbed some scrambled eggs, a few slices of bacon—careful not to disrupt Samson’s adjustments—and then paused. This close, even Samson looked more uncomfortable than usual, his brows furrowed and face bordering on stricken. “Hey, Sam?” Jo whispered, taking in a breath when he glanced at her with noticeably wet eyes. “Are you all right?”
For a couple of seconds, Samson didn’t respond, just looked at her with that same worried expression. It was a dumb question and she knew that; none of them were really “all right.” Then he sighed, an exhale that Jo felt leave her own lungs in response.
“Yes,” Samson mumbled, scrubbing harder at the soapy pan. “I just don’t like the waiting.”
Jo wanted to ask him what he meant, but there was something about the sentence that felt final, a heavy silence following in its wake. She wasn’t sure how she knew, but she was certain Samson was done talking. So, with one last murmur of thanks, Jo took her plate out of the kitchen, down the hall, and as far away from the television as she could get.
Takako was expectedly awake when Jo let herself quietly into her room. She was now in a seated position, but otherwise didn’t seem to have moved much from her futon. So Jo placed the plate of food in front of her and took back her own spot on the adjacent futon as well.
“I don’t know if you’re hungry, but Samson made it.” Jo offered, trying once again to simply fill the silence with anything but worry and tension. “At the very least, it’ll feel good to fill your stomach with something hot.”
Takako nodded at her, mumbling what sounded like a soft thank you, but she made no move to eat. Jo could sympathize; her own stomach tied in sickening knots. She didn’t have the heart to mention the fairly recent development of a tsunami; Takako would find out soon enough.
As Takako stared off into the distance, Jo started to see traces of a similar expression on her face, the same concern that had been mirrored on the faces of the rest of her team. A concern Jo was slowly starting to realize ran deeper than just for the lives lost in Japan. Everyone was on edge, waiting for something, as if they expected the catastrophic after effects of Fuji to somehow reach them as well.
Eventually, Jo couldn’t take the silence anymore, pulling her knees up to her chest and hugging them close. “Takako?” she asked, wincing when it seemed to startle the woman out of her thoughts. Takako hummed in acknowledgement, but seemed no less distracted. “Samson said he hated the waiting. What did he mean?”
Somewhere in her, Jo had known. Even as she asked the question, she knew what the answer would be. She just hadn’t wanted to hear it. Or maybe her mind just rejected thinking it, as if that could make it any more or less real.
When Takako frowned in response, it was with no little amount of fresh pain in her eyes. She looked reluctant to answer even, raising one hand to her mouth as the other tapped a soft rhythm against the tatami. It took longer than Jo expected for her to string together a response, but when she finally dropped her hand, it was with a stoic and schooled expression. Even if the turmoil in her eyes hadn’t entirely faded.
“He means waiting for Snow to call us to the briefing room,” Takako said, a fraction of that carefully crafted expression crumbling. Jo didn’t need to ask for clarification, but she gave it to her anyway. “With a disaster this big, there’s no way someone won’t make a wish.”
“Of course someone will make a wish.” That much was obvious. Hundreds of thousands of people were dead or gravely injured. “But what are we supposed to do? Stop a volcano? Even Snow knows we can’t prevent a natural disaster.”
Takako finally looked up. Jo had spent so long trying to get close to the woman, but now that she finally was, all she wanted was to be blind to the truth in her eyes. Especially as she said, with a blunt and grave certainty, “That doesn’t mean we won’t be asked to try.”
Chapter 9
Late Night Visitor
EVENTUALLY, TAKAKO HAD requested to have some time alone, a request that Jo couldn’t deny. Everyone had their own manner of processing and she wasn’t about to dictate Takako’s.
Jo didn’t go very far. She didn’t feel like wandering the mansion, didn’t have the energy to do anything in a recreation room (despite all earlier notions of picking up a hobby), and couldn’t continually impose on Nico. So when Takako gently kicked her out, Jo drifted across the hall to her own bedroom.
She laid on her bed, stretched out amid the plushness, occasionally watching the nighttime of Paris. When the sun rose, so did Jo, for no other reason than habit. She left her bed and with it what felt like all notion of ever being able to sleep again.
The next night, Wayne kept her company—companionship only; it was impossible to feel any sort ofurgesunder the present circumstances. Wayne was on the same page, it seemed, when he produced a bottle of whiskey from his room and they drank till dawn, thinking of new (terrible) “crew names” for the Society. The two winners were “The Timekeepers of Infinity” for most palatable, and “Witnesses of Truth” for most cringe worthy. At least it gave them a laugh, something Jo realized she hadn’t done for days.
